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Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak

Since the end of 2019, an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide causing thousands of deaths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is supported by SARS-CoV-2 and represents the causative agent of a...

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Autores principales: Posarelli, Chiara, Maglionico, Maria Novella, Covello, Giuseppe, Loiudice, Pasquale, Cipriano, Alessandro, Santini, Massimo, Figus, Michele
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7529259/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33002074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239796
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author Posarelli, Chiara
Maglionico, Maria Novella
Covello, Giuseppe
Loiudice, Pasquale
Cipriano, Alessandro
Santini, Massimo
Figus, Michele
author_facet Posarelli, Chiara
Maglionico, Maria Novella
Covello, Giuseppe
Loiudice, Pasquale
Cipriano, Alessandro
Santini, Massimo
Figus, Michele
author_sort Posarelli, Chiara
collection PubMed
description Since the end of 2019, an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide causing thousands of deaths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is supported by SARS-CoV-2 and represents the causative agent of a potentially fatal disease that is of great global public health concern. Italy has been the first European country recording an elevated number of infected forcing the Italian Government to call for total lockdown. The lockdown had the aim to limit the spread of infection through social distancing. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the pandemic has affected the patient’s accesses to the Ophthalmological Emergency Department of a tertiary referral center in central-northern Italy, during the lockdown period. The charts of all patients that came to the Emergency Department during the lockdown period (March 10 –May 4, 2020) have been retrospectively collected and compared with those in the same period of 2019 and the period from 15 January– 9 March 2020. A significant reduction of visits during the lockdown has been observed, compared with those of pre-lockdown period (reduction of 65.4%) and with those of the same period of 2019 (reduction of 74.3%). Particularly, during the lockdown, minor and not urgency visits decreased whereas the undeferrable urgency ones increased. These pieces of evidence could be explained by the fear of patients to be infected; but also revealed patients misuse of emergency services.
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spelling pubmed-75292592020-10-02 Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak Posarelli, Chiara Maglionico, Maria Novella Covello, Giuseppe Loiudice, Pasquale Cipriano, Alessandro Santini, Massimo Figus, Michele PLoS One Research Article Since the end of 2019, an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide causing thousands of deaths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is supported by SARS-CoV-2 and represents the causative agent of a potentially fatal disease that is of great global public health concern. Italy has been the first European country recording an elevated number of infected forcing the Italian Government to call for total lockdown. The lockdown had the aim to limit the spread of infection through social distancing. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the pandemic has affected the patient’s accesses to the Ophthalmological Emergency Department of a tertiary referral center in central-northern Italy, during the lockdown period. The charts of all patients that came to the Emergency Department during the lockdown period (March 10 –May 4, 2020) have been retrospectively collected and compared with those in the same period of 2019 and the period from 15 January– 9 March 2020. A significant reduction of visits during the lockdown has been observed, compared with those of pre-lockdown period (reduction of 65.4%) and with those of the same period of 2019 (reduction of 74.3%). Particularly, during the lockdown, minor and not urgency visits decreased whereas the undeferrable urgency ones increased. These pieces of evidence could be explained by the fear of patients to be infected; but also revealed patients misuse of emergency services. Public Library of Science 2020-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7529259/ /pubmed/33002074 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239796 Text en © 2020 Posarelli et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Posarelli, Chiara
Maglionico, Maria Novella
Covello, Giuseppe
Loiudice, Pasquale
Cipriano, Alessandro
Santini, Massimo
Figus, Michele
Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title_full Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title_fullStr Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title_full_unstemmed Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title_short Ophthalmological emergencies and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak
title_sort ophthalmological emergencies and the sars-cov-2 outbreak
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7529259/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33002074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239796
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